When planning a trip, you may be so excited about the sights and sounds you will see that you don’t do proper budgeting for your trip. Not budgeting properly can easily happen if you don’t include all the necessary expenses in your budget. To avoid this, use a trip expense planner. The purpose of a trip expense planner is to list all the different categories of possible expenses and adding amounts to each category to ensure that you don’t come across hidden costs that may bite you before or after taking your trip.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links. Clicking on these links mean that I may earn a small commission should you purchase through the link, but will not involve any additional costs for you.

You should complete a trip expense planner for every trip you plan on taking. It is such a useful tool for trip budgeting that it should be completed even when you just start planning a trip. Doing this would assist you in setting a budget, saving for your trip and not experiencing any cost surprises along the way.

Consider the following expenses when completing your trip expense planner to budget for a trip:

Passport costs

The very first expense to consider is whether you have a passport or whether your existing passport is sufficient for your trip. Applying for or renewing your passport is usually not a significant cost, but it is always better to be conservative when budgeting.

Luggage

Do you have a suitcase or backpack to use while on your trip? Is your existing equipment still suitable for your journey? It is always good to have good quality and durable luggage to keep your belongings safe. The costs for a new suitcase or backpack vary, depending on what your criteria are.

Transportation costs

There are many different modes of transportation, including flights, rail, cruises, and road transport. A trip expense planner should consider the cost of flights, car rentals, fuel costs, train tickets and any other costs relating to the different modes of transport. It is also important to consider the cost of public transport or taxis that you will be using when reaching your destination.

Sightseeing and entertainment

A trip expense planner should also make provision for costs relating to any tours you may want to take, entrance fees to sights, souvenir shopping and any other forms of entertainment you may want to enjoy while on your trip. Your travel research should give you an idea of the sights you may want to see during your journey.

Accommodation

Every trip expense planner should consider the costs of your accommodation while away. Accommodation costs could include hotels, camping, vacation rentals or even campervans.

Meals and beverages

Budgeting for meals and drinks is important and should be included on your trip expense planner. Depending on the country you visit, this could be a significant cost for your trip. Your meals and beverages budget should consider your family’s eating habits, for example, do you like to have three meals every day or can you manage on two while having fruit for your third meal. You may also decide that you would rather cook than eat out, then you need to budget for groceries. It is better to over-estimate your food expenses that to have too little since you may then not enjoy your meals as much as when you know it won’t break your bank account.

Travel insurance

Many people make the mistake of not budgeting for travel insurance. NEVER do this! Travel insurance is essential and provides you with health insurance as well as insurance for electronic equipment you may have with you while traveling. Travel insurance is not that expenses and worth every cent!

Visa costs

Your trip expense planner should also include budgeting for possible visas you may have to obtain before your trip. Visas to some countries are free, but for some countries getting the visa alone can be a rather larger-than-expected expense. For example, for South Africans to obtain a visa to the United Kingdom is a rather comprehensive and expensive process. If you wanted to visit multiple countries, consider the visas required for each country; some might not cost much, but if you are visiting many countries on one trip, the costs may add up to a significant amount.

Immunizations/medication

Some countries require you to have specific immunizations before you visit and may even require proof of this. Just phone a travel clinic or doctor offering travel-related services. When planning your trip, just give them a quick call to make sure what immunizations you need to get and what their costs will be.

Also, make sure you have enough chronic medication if you have any. If your doctor also offers travel services, get a backup script for your chronic medication and also ask your doctor for a script for a generic antibiotic in case you come down with the flu.

Restocking your first aid kit

I am ashamed to admit this, but it has happened to me more than once. A day or two before a big trip, as I am packing the first aid kit, I notice that it is practically empty and has none of the essential items. Medicine in other countries may have different names and can be expensive. Therefore, it is better to take your first aid kit with some essential items, such as pain tablets, something for stomach cramps and diarrhea, and allergy medicine. Plasters, bandages and sterilization equipment are useful as well. No need to go overboard, but again, better be safe than sorry.

Communication or Internet costs

Don’t assume that a country you will be visiting has wifi everywhere and that it will work at all times. Rather budget for communication and Internet-related expenses such as buying a SIM card or data when overseas. These may be significant, depending on how often you want to communicate with your friends and family at home.

Other equipment costs

Perhaps you like taking lots of photos and may need an additional memory card for your camera. Or maybe you would like a particular lens for your camera to take pictures of special moments. If you plan on camping, for example, and need a new sleeping bag due to extreme weather conditions, include these costs on your trip expense planner. Also, consider new shoes or clothes that you may need for your journey, especially if you are visiting a destination with unusual weather conditions.

Currency exchange fees

Currency exchange fees are the fees that you will pay for the conversion of one currency into another. When you visit multiple countries with different currencies, this cost would be higher than when visiting one country or different countries using the same currency. Although this should not be a significant cost, it is better to budget for this in your trip expense planner.

Pet or child care while away

One of our essential costs when going away is a housesitter to look after our pets. Having peace of mind while away by knowing we have a trustworthy person at home makes this expense worth every penny! During our last trip, our hamster developed a growth on its foot, and our housesitter had to take him to the vet to have it removed. Either leave some money for the housesitter for such unforeseen expenses or make arrangements with your vet to add it to your account with them.

Setting aside extra money for incidental expenses

Include a buffer in your budget when estimating your trip expenses to cover any unforeseen expenses or higher costs than expected. Remember, being conservative in your budget may result in you having money left after your trip, which is better than realizing afterward that you simply did not save enough and will owe on your credit card.

Free trip expense planner!

To help you budget for your next trip, I have developed a trip expense planner for you to use. Just click on the image below to download it for free!

These are all the costs I can think of when planning a trip. Can you think of any costs or expenses that I left out? What process do you follow when budgeting for travel?

If you are anything like me, you take a lot of photos. Photos represent our memories. They connect us to places we have visited, people we spent time with and experiences we have had. I love my pictures, but one of my concerns is always that I may lose them. Therefore, it is important to make sure you store your photos safely and that you have a backup in case anything happens to your laptop or hard-drive backup. Nowadays it is easy to store your photos online as there are so many online photo storage sites available.

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Online photo storage sites

Google Photos gives users unlimited storage space for high-resolution photos and videos up to 16MP and 1080p HD, respectively. You can access Google Photos from any phone, tablet or computer through the use of the app or the website. Your photos are always available and secure. You can set up albums to share with friends and family who can also add photos to these albums. There are powerful editing tools available on Google Photos.

Google Photos provides a safe backup of all photos on your phone. Once you have backed the photos up in Google Photos, you can remove the photos from your phone, tablet or computer. One of the best features of Google Photos is that both the phone and desktop apps automatically syncs photos on your phone or computer to the cloud.

With Google Photos you have unlimited storage as long as you use Google’s compression setting for photos. Google Photos resize photos above 16 megapixels. You also have the option to store your photos in an uncompressed format. In this case, the first 15 gigabytes are free, but additional storage is available at only $1.99 per month for 100 gigabytes. If you use Google Drive, your contents on the drive and your Gmail content will count toward the storage limits you have.

One of the features I enjoy most about Google Photos is that it shows you photos taken on specific dates in the past, which is a lovely way to be reminded of the past experiences.

Dropbox offers a variety of storage plans. It offers a free 2 gigabytes of storage and prices for additional storage goes up to $10 per month for one terabyte. It also rewards free users with additional storage if they complete random tasks, such as enabling the upload feature from their camera or connecting to their Facebook accounts.

Dropbox offers applications for most platforms. These applications can automatically back-up your photos and videos.

Dropbox displays your photos on a timeline you can scroll through. It also offers another application called Carousel that automatically uploads your photos. One of the benefits of Carousel is that it is a sharing tool as it organizes your shared photos into conversations with people you chose to share specific photos with. This can, however, only work if everyone you have shared the photos with also has the Carousel application installed on their devices.

You can share photos in Dropbox with other people, and you can create slideshows to share with friends and family. You can also share files directly with friends or family.

One of the drawbacks of Dropbox is that it does not allow for the tagging of photos, printing or editing. But for backing photos up or storing photos online, Dropbox works well.

Amazon offers unlimited photo storage or backup to its Amazon Prime users – Amazon Prime costs $99 per year. Users need to pay if they want to store videos that are more than 5 gigabyte which is the limit set by Amazon. Non-prime clients can get access to the photo storage facility for $12 per year for a 100GB plan or $60 per year for the 1Tb plan.

Users have reported that the web interface of this site is confusing to use and photo uploading is slightly difficult.

According to Amazon, they have a powerful search facility which allows you to find photos fast when you search for places or people. The Amazon photo storage site organizes photos automatically and does not require tagging. Amazon’s photo storage does not allow you to import photos from social networks.

Apple offers two photo services, namely, the iCloud Photo Stream and the iCloud Photo Library. The iCloud Photo Stream allows you to store your last 1,000 photos (or 30 days worth of photos) in the cloud for free, while the iCloud Photo Library syncs your iOS devices to Apple’s Photos app for Mac. You get 5 gigabytes of storage for free, but additional storage is available from $1 per month for 20 gigabytes of storage. It allows you to change the settings to store lower-resolution copies of your photos on the cloud to free up space on your phone. The iCloud storage does not allow you to import photos from social networks.

You can share photos in iPhoto or on a web page. iCloud allows the tagging of photos with names and locations. Other iCloud users can also add photos to your iCloud library.

iPhoto allows the creation of cards and photo books, which is a useful feature. Unfortunately, to edit these items you can create, you need the Apple iPhoto application which is only available to Apple users.

The site allows you to find and tag your friends and family. Smart facial tagging can be used to find friends and family’s photos easily.

Shutterfly can be set-up to automatically upload your pictures from all your devices, from your phone to your desktop. It allows you to upload your photos at full resolution, meaning you don’t lose any of the quality of your photos.

With Shutterfly you can order prints or create personalized gifts for your friends and family.

Flickr offers one terabyte of free storage if you are willing to have ads on the site. If you don’t want to see any ads, Flickr will cost you $5,99 per month or $49,99 per year. Flickr’s site is secure, thereby keeping users’ photos safe.

Some users have reported that using Flickr is a bit confusing. Flickr changes photos to a standard size. If you upload a photo that does not meet the standard criteria, Flickr may add black bars on the sides to get the photo to the average size.

The site offers a variety of tools, including tagging. It also supports viewing and uploading photos at different resolutions.

You can organize your photos into albums or collections and print these individually or into photo books.

Flickr has a mobile and desktop application, which makes the automatic uploading of photos in bulk easy. The application can identify duplicate pictures and can skip uploading the duplicates. You have to upload videos manually.

Photobucket allows for 2 gigabytes of free storage if you are willing to look at ads. For about $2 per month, the ads are removed, and you will get access to 10 gigabytes of storage space.

Photobucket offers various editing tools with easy to use interface. You are allowed to tag photos and organize them into albums or stories. Stories is a presentation of photos with text and can be compiled by a group of users.

Photobucket provides comprehensive support for selling prints, such as individual photos, photo books or even other things such as tablet cases or blankets with your photos printed on them.

SmugMug is a design-focused site and offers ideal storage for your photos, including a custom homepage (example: focusedtravels.smugmug.com) with a wide range of design templates. The site can easily be used by semi-professional and professional photographers as it displays your photos as an online portfolio.

SmugMug does not offer any free storage but does have a free 14-day trial if you are interested in trying it out. The cheapest package costs $6 a month or $48 a year, which gives you unlimited storage for photos and 1080p videos. SmugMug does offer a range of editing tools, which are easy to use.

The site also offers options to turn your photos into merchandise to sell.

Microsoft’s OneDrive offers limited storage for free Additional storage can cost anything from $9,99 for five terabytes of storage, depending on the package you choose.

You can enable auto-upload if you use the OneDrive app. OneDrive uses tags to group your photos automatically into different categories. To change or add tags, you need to use the web interface.

OneDrive is suitable for multiple platforms, from Apple devices to Xbox. If you use the OneDrive app, you can upload your photos automatically at full-resolution. Once uploaded you can organize your images. The OneDrive app offers different ways to share your pictures.

Shoebox offers free unlimited storage for your photos and its storage is secure with bank-level encryption.

You can upload your photos automatically with the Shoebox application and view them from your phone, tablet or computer.

One of the nicest features of Shoebox is that it highlights places you visited and photos you took a year ago, which serves as powerful reminders of events in our lives.

Which is the best online photo storage site?

As you can see, there are so many online photo storage and photo backup sites available, many offering very similar features and prices.

Even the free sites offer secure and large photo storage. Their existence makes it so easy to have a backup or storage facility for your photos – there is no excuse for not having a backup service these days!

I use several of these services to store and backup my photos. I use Google Photos, Dropbox and iCloud.

Which of these services do you use to store or backup your photos? Are there any sites you use that I have not listed above? Please share how you store and backup your photos online!

If you are like me, you never feel like you get enough leave days to take all the trips you would like to take and visit the places on your bucket list. How can one make the most of your leave days? Here are some steps…

Step 1: Consider public holidays

One thing I do at the end of every year is to look at the calendar for the next year. I study it to see when all the public holidays are. I then look to see if there are any months with more than one public holiday or even a public holiday on a Tuesday or Thursday. This allows me to see if I can make the most of my leave days by taking leave between those public holidays.

Let’s look at an example. Most countries celebrate Easter and will have one or two public holidays around that time. In South Africa, we have the Easter holidays and several other public holidays around April and May.

We have the following public holidays in South Africa during April 2017:

14 April 2017: Good Friday

15 April 2017: Holy Saturday

16 April 2017: Easter Sunday

17 April 2017: Family Day

27 April 2017: Freedom Day

1 May 2017: Workers’ Day

To make the most of my leave days, I can take eight days leave and be on leave for 18 days! Isn’t that simply the best?

Step 2: Consider compulsory leave requirements

Many companies in South Africa have a leave rule requirement to take ten consecutive leave days on an annual basis. This requirement does not include public holidays, meaning it has to be ten consecutive working days of leave taken.

Some companies require their employees to take off between Christmas Day and New Year’s day as the company closes completely during that time. Other countries and companies may have similar rules. Such requirements can play a major role in your efforts to make the most of your annual leave days.

Once I have looked at all the public holidays and seen where taking leave can extend my time away from the office, I check to see if any of these will be useful for complying with company leave rules. If I combine taking annual leave with public holidays, I can at times be away from the office for as much as three weeks. Who wouldn’t want to stretch their ten days consecutive leave to 15 days without any real effort?

In the above example, I can take my ten consecutive leave days and be on leave for a total of 20 days!

Step 3: Consider extending work trips

Some people are lucky enough to get to travel overseas for work. Knowing in advance when and where you will go is not always possible, I always try to extend planned work trips by taking a few days annual leave. If I am going on a work trip, my company pays my flight, visas and transport to and from the airport. Extending the trip by adding leave days is usually not a problem as long as the cost of the flights remains the same as for making the work trip only. Travelling like this saves me a lot of money.

Several times when I had to go overseas on a work trip, my partner joined me at the end of the work part of my journey. We then only have to pay his flights and visas instead of both of ours. This is a good deal!

To conclude… how to make the most of your leave days

These steps will help you make the most of your leave days if travelling is important to you. We are busier than ever and having a lovely long break from the office should be a requirement. In fact, making the most of your leave days is a necessity and not a luxury!

What do you do to make the most of your leave days? Any tips you want to share?

In setting up this blog and running it, there are several resources I use. Here is a list with a brief description of my recommended blogging resources, together with reasons I I love and use them!

Please note that some of these resources I recommend include affiliate links. Should you purchase through my links, I will earn affiliate income, which cost you nothing extra.

Recommended blogging resources – hosting

Hosting and the registration of a domain name are the first essential tools any blogger needs. I have been using Namecheap since I started out and have had no issues with them. Like their name says, they are cheap, and I have found their support service quite good, and that is why I have not changed to a different host. Many people buy domains through NameCheap and then just transfer it to a different host.

Recommended blogging resources – WordPress themes

I used to use free themes until I discovered the Elise theme – a child theme for the Genesis framework theme. I love the Genesis themes; they are fast and attractive. Setting them up is easy and customising even easier.

Recommended blogging resources – Wealthy Affiliate

Wealthy Affiliate is a fantastic resource for any website you may want to start. It provides training on all aspects of having a blog or online business. Even with the free version, there are plenty on offer such as affiliate and other training. Wealthy Affiliate offer free hosting for up to 2 websites for free members and also a keyword tool for keyword research. For premium members, there are even more benefits. I love the discussion board/blogging functionality on the site as it is very active and support from other members are pretty amazing!

Recommended blogging resources – Email marketing

Since I have not been blogging for long, I am still using Mailerlite. I used to use MailChimp, but mailerlite is so much easier to set up in my opinion. I find it easy to use and set-up PLUS as long as your subscribers are less than 2000, your account remains free. It does not have all the fancy bells and whistles of many of the more advanced systems, but for beginners it is perfect!

This list is not a comprehensive list of all resources a new blogger can use but include basic ones just to get you going!

I am constantly doing travel research online. Or perhaps that is what I tell myself when I read the one travel blog after another. But then again, even when I am not travelling, I am a great believer in being prepared and pro-active.

Travel research online: two free tools

There are two tools I use on a daily basis to do my travel research online. These two tools are Feedly and Evernote. The best part of both these tools is that they are FREE! Paid versions exist, but the free versions are sufficient if you are just starting out.

Using Feedly in my travel research process

Feedly is a news aggregator., meaning it provides you with updates on any new content published on blogs or websites you have added to your Feedly account.

To add a blog to Feedly is easy. You copy the URL of the blog, go to Feedly, click on the Discover and follow button on the left and paste the URL in the search box in the middle.

Feedly as a tool for travel research online

Feedly will then show you a list of feeds from the chosen blog; usually the main blog’s posts or comments on blog posts. I usually just add the blog feed. Once you select the feed, you want to add, choose the category on the left to which you want to add it. These categories are set up by you.

Feedly – adding a feed

Whenever I come across a blog I like, I simply add it to my Feedly account.

Over time I have added quite a few travel blogs to my Feedly account. Using Feedly has been great since it means I never run out of reading (or should I say research) material!

Using Evernote in my travel research online

On a daily basis whenever I have a free minute or five to spare, I go to my Feedly account and start my travel research online. As I scan the feeds in my Feedly account, I may spot a blog post that sounds interesting. I usually like to open the link in a new window to read the blog posts on the source blog, but you may prefer reading it in Feedly by clicking on the title displayed in Feedly.

If I find a post interesting – possibly a destination or sight I would like to visit in my future travels – I use Evernote to save it. I find Evernote extremely useful for travel research and planning.

When I am on the blog with the new post, I click on the Chrome Evernote add-on I installed. This brings a drop-down menu up and allows me to save the article under a category specified by me. Once it is saved, I can close the window since I know the post has been saved in my Evernote account where I will find it when I need to.

Evernote for travel research online

Over time I have built up quite a portfolio of categories relating to travel to different countries in Evernote. By saving posts in Evernote, I ensure that the information does not get lost and forgotten. When I have to start planning a trip, I quickly go to the relevant category in Evernote and scan the articles I have saved there for ideas of sights to see or things to do. But more about that in a future post!

Have you ever used Feedly or Evernote for travel research? If not, what apps or products do you use?